.
Pleased that some of you would like me to return to the Pig’s Arms. ( I hope with open arms) My heartfelt thanks. Quarrels or disagreements are easy to fall into but less easy to get out of. Both parties to the fight often think they are right and the more the disagreement continues the worse it often gets. Firmly entrenched and utterly convinced of their just stance, both parties keep stoking the fire with the kindle of indignation of “how can the other ones be so stupid and remain so belligerently opposed to my stance which is the right stance.” ” I am right, the other is wrong. How come they can’t see that?”
The answer to getting out of this dilemma is a good deal of trying to imagine seeing it from the opposite point of view. Put yourself in their shoes and try and get a handle on them. What makes them think they are right and could there be some way to move forward or away from the fight? A great deal of compromise is needed. I might just have to swallow my false pride and improve my negotiating skills or avoid hostile territory all together. Hone one’s diplomacy and above all use humor and imagination, and always try to get as many perspectives on issues as possible.
I certainly stoke the fires in some of my writing. I love Australia but see many areas that seem ridiculously out of kilter or askew or just plain funny. I then write about it, leaving others to agree, disagree or put it better. (Not difficult) The years in Revesby’s suburbia have been a rich vein in which to fossick, delve into and write about. The lawns, fibro houses, the rockery gardens and above all, the deafening silence of those lonely streets I used to walk through, in the heat of summer’s cricket score filtering through the venetians, cracker night, the local pub with mums in pyjamas and wearing hair curlers waiting for hubby to hand over his wages, the workman’s weekly train ticket; a never ending smorgasbord of experiences.
Here in Bowral, another different experience. Camellias and Hebe, the retired men wearing red jumpers and immaculately coiffured blond matrons driving their Mercedes. This is a rock solid area of staunchly held with well concreted conservative views. So many fences to peer over, so many shopping trolleys to survey, and much, much more. I’ll hardly have the time.
Perhaps this and much more at times create discord and I cause umbrage to some. Sorry for this, I’ll pack it better; leave out Norway or stats on teen-pregnancies, try and reduce areas clad with zinc-alume or pebble crete. So….I am sorry for any perceived or real injury I might have caused, but and must also say, was secretly pleased by Vivian’s brave plea and others to keep coming to the Pig’s Arms. I will, it’s just too much fun. So, here I go again. Back…
PS. If there are any others that feel the need to say sorry……. form the queue here.*
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
There was a pile of dead bodies here, just now.
LikeLike
Do you BBQ them? Who cleans and scales?
LikeLike
H ha. Your 2 clever, Voix.
LikeLike
I made spaghetti vongale. Superb.
Used some of the passata, made with toms from the garden and plenty of ‘erbs.
White wine, too. So I have had some alcohol this year.
LikeLike
Damn. All that blonde hair dye wasted. Have to learn how not to think. Any tips? 🙂
LikeLike
I love spaghetti alla vongole. Probably for sentimental reasons because I first had it in Rome, with the little Italian (Roman?) clams. Is that what you caught? Shellfish? LOL
LikeLike
I should have taken a photo of the little rascals. Although they were New Zealand and very plump.
Just a normal typpe recipe, but with herbs that I like and spag al-dente.
garlic, onions, tomatoes and a smidgeon of passata
I sweat off the onions and garlic with the herbs and put it to one side. Then add it back when the clams open. Then mix in the spagetti with a chiffonade of basil and some cohpped parsley & fennel (just a few fronds, not the base). Google it around with tongs, then serve.
Just a little coriander on the top. Mine is tastless at the moment as it has gone to seed–so it’s just for decoration with the pretty little white flowers.
LikeLike
We were both writing at the same time.
Fishing? No, I only caught some throw backs. The clams, pippies, vongole or cockles came from the farmers market, cryvac. Use by 13th Jan.
Used!
LikeLike
Thank you for explaining that to me about the timing, VL. This must mean I’ve been rehabilitated after my earlier slip up.
Your recipes are the food equivalent of a travel brochure. OK, what I’m really thinking is foodie soft porn. Without the rude bits.
LikeLike
The rellies are driving back to Sydney tomorrow, so I can settle down a bit.
LikeLike
Bonne nuit.
LikeLike
Gez, I think much domestic harmony is lost when is purchased the dishwasher. I used to regard a slow thoughtful cleanse of, say a beer glass until the water runs off in sheets – and doesn’t bead up as meditative and it allows time to forgive many domestic sins in quiet contemplation – as well as in sudsy dialogue.
LikeLike
Television perhaps really brought down preparedness to dialogue and anyway, emmjay therein was indeed the advertisement for the dishwasher. 🙂
People cannot buy stuff at the same rate if they are talking to each other either. Sharing talk,leastwise … and likely would decide if they were really talking to not buy the dishwasher. 🙂
…’in quiert contremplation and sudsy dialogue’
LikeLike
…typo ‘quiet’ not ‘quiert’.
LikeLike
But I liked ‘quiert’ ‘shoe… it seemed to suit ‘contremplation and sudsy dialogue’…
🙂
LikeLike
Hylda Baker, T2..
LikeLike
Eggsacly Vee Ell…
🙂
LikeLike
Be soon, I said, be soon.
“It’s rickydoodulous!”
LikeLike
Funny. Contremplation. Didn’t notice. Quiert does look better I think.
It’s all perfick (Pa Larkin).
🙂
LikeLike
And hasn’t she done well? Catherine.
LikeLike
I only just saw that recently in credits Julian that the daughter Mariette is Catherine Zeta-Jones. Isn’t she delightful in Darling Buds of May, hardly more than 18 she looks?
LikeLike
Good to see you’re here G. Been beach fishing. Gonna have a shower. Covered in sand & worm blood!
LikeLike
Catch owt?
🙂
LikeLike
NO!!
And just got back AGAIN.Left my brother-in-law and nephew on the Southport sandpumping jetty.
MORE wormjuice.2 fish.They started biting when I stared leaving. Hit shower and telly!
LikeLike
Two days af fishing VL, any more this week. All sounds good to me.
LikeLike
I agree with Algae, Vee Ell… half your luck! Been a looooooooooooong time since I taught a worm to swim…
😉
LikeLike
Hope you didn’t have to labour too long VL, it might rub off 🙂
LikeLike
Nice story Gerard. I relate to the cricket scores and Venetians(ghastly things). When I was student nurse I spent some time at Bowral Hospital being lectured by Win Smith. Win was famous for writing nursing text books, she was tough as nails and very smart. Win taught me about the patient being the focus, I trait I still use today, I think that is what has made a successful nurse.
Sorry, I hope I have apologised to everyone and if not then I am sorry. By the way Tutu and I when to our favourite little Greek cafe for tea last night for my birthday. Tutu shouted, what a woman. We had a Mediterranean platter for two and shared a nice bottle of Pepperjack Shiraz, cabbed it both ways and sat on the porch sipping a bottle of champagne, smoking Peter Stuyvesants and listening to our favourite songs, absolutely marvellous.
LikeLike
You jetsetter you, Hung smoking stivo’s for your international passport to smoking pleasure. Well I think that’s how the add went anyway.
Sounds like Tutu and you had a good time.
LikeLike
Yeah, we had a great time, I am trying not to get too excited by there is a glimmer of hope for us yet. I just need to be patient, keep on top of the Black Dog and you just never know 🙂
LikeLike
To Hung I’d say when you are good you are very good. That kind of evening is really pretty cool. My Greek lamb dinner on Friday night was about the best I’ve done. The lamb meat was incredibly good and they were almost fighting over the lemony potato wedges which are cooked with the lamb. We had a bottle of local chenin blanc (chilled) which was bloody beeyootiful. I’m the only one who has a ciggy afterwards.
LikeLike
Sounds great Vivie
LikeLike
Glad you liked it Hung.
Your apologies are the best, something we could all learn from. Keep on top of the black dog, perhaps worm it or bath it in malethon.
LikeLike
Thank you Gerard, when you are an emotional hot head like me apologies become very regular and intricate. Say hello to the Helvi-tastic for me 🙂
LikeLike
Hi everybody and Gez
…and Hung, now I am back online at home, download speeds and uploads are not that much better at the moment regardless the horrendous cost.
I have however followed all the Pig’s Arms dialogue through email in the library the whole time. Slowmo. It was laborious and finding myself in an ultimate unhappy experience, experience of your trauma Hung, traumatised me. As it was I was experiencing trauma the result of a local friend’s mental health leading them down the garden path to that gate that opens, o just so easily anyway onto abuse in our society.
What you had to say Hung so consistently and seeming determined to harm harmed. It was a final straw because the Pig’s Arms although at times rocky has been my haven. I withdrew into myself and my home away from any social gathering.
I unavoidably fear Hung you are implying you have a reserve ticket on being an emotional hothead …and that you are not leaving much room for anyone else to occupy the dress circle. I don’t want the seats left at the ringside, in a slipstream of poo. I walked slap bang into it seeking the companionship of the Pig’s Arms, reading it in the library. Its impact was too severe for me to just bounce back from it. Yet Hung, you are as full on in this other direction of apparent good will and joviality as you were replete with shocking abuse and it doesn’t sit well with me that in the very same breath you describe having a good time at a dinner out with Tutu because it was your birthday.
I feel a bucket of resentment.
Of course you are grateful to your friend Tutu. What about those others of us you damage who had no-one to call for, who nobody came to visit to help, to listen to. Pertinently I read streams of abuse you uttered and the construction raised against the philosophical and upright, kind natures of people who happen to be gay, or am I meant not to mention this…what about my relations, their friends, my friends, partners, members of the community who I want to socialise with as equally as I do allegedly rigy didge bone fide heterosexuals such as your damaged self, a blithe spirit regardless as if absolutely nothing too really bad happened.
To boot you are a nurse but expressed such depths of vitriolic hatred allegedly based on your personal experience of abuse when you were a small boy. I on th other hand was primarily alarmed to consider anybody being dependent at their most vulnerable on your ability to make decisions.
Like hell that perhaps you were not as bad as all that or whatever the phrase you used somewhere else that shocked me. Aint that an unavoidable truth for all that I want it otherwise.
If you said the things you did standing out in a street for the relentless time you kept it up you would have likely been arrested.
Let’s consider isolation. I had no-one to talk about it with. No home phone. An expensive mobile only. A draughty open phone box on the side of the road and its gaping hungry maw guzzling coins, outside the Police station, surrounded in the evening by mosquitos.
I experienced anxiety attacks thus…grieved for the loss of you as I believed I knew you… and the damage was even more emotionally devastating because another friend at the same time was experiencing a psychosis they in their turn believed was generated by being allegedly friendless, nay surrounded by alleged enemies. I was brought as low as I could go. I felt paralysed. That is after all what sustained abuse does. What witnessing it does. What being nagged by its obsessions does. It breaks the vulnerable, eventually.
A local close friend needed specialist mental health services. Irony. I could not be more intimidated by my aggregate experiences as it was, let alone wanted to walk into the jaws of myth and take on, particularly not, the fairy tale I had to treat with in community that ‘it’ll be apples’…as well I am a newcomer to this community. My friend was provided eventually the essential services not exclusively because of anything I did, but rather more as a result of the illness finally bursting out from behind its shades, its protective covers, its contortions and distortions, its trickery.
I am left frightened and debilitated.
Communities have to tackle this problem and especially communication about it that mental illness has victims as surely as there are victims of crime. Mental ill health is affecting us all so badly whatever our personal status. We have enormous problems knowing, let alone accepting, what we see and even more problems deciding to proceed on what we know regards mental health and mental illness. Highly trained professionals turn their eyes blindly too often until it is too late. Our social preference is to turn a blind eye to behavioural abnormalities regardless they threaten us, bully, cajole, manipulate our emotions, construct, call us names … and a golden oldie of abuse is to utter slurs against our sexual characters and/or abilities of discernment. It is a way of effectively robbing another person of every last shred of their dignity. It is rape of innocence. It does to the mind what the intrusion of rape does to the physical body.
I don’t eg like alleged jokes that in your face just continue the thread, references to bodily functions designed to shock that are nothing but abuse cloaked in liberalism. There are many ways to perpetrate abuse.
LikeLike
I want to acknowledge these words that you have written, sandshoe, in the way only you can. You have written from the heart what I first filtered through my head.
In the end, it just doesn’t matter why abuse happens. It just matters that it stops.
LikeLike
Interesting words Sandshoe.
What’s pertinent, here, to me anyway, is that after we hold our hands & minds out, that it is reciprocated for ever. Not just at convenient times.
End of sermon.
LikeLike
Wow, very deep shoe. I am sorry for the damage I caused you. Your comment has a lot in it, it may take me a few days to go through it as I am not very bright.
PS: Love your photo
LikeLike
Hung, I don’t accept that you are not very bright.
LikeLike
Your post is very detailed an elaborate, some of it I am not sure I understand, however I will work through it over the next few days and will probably want to talk to you more, some of it has caused me pain. Are you back home in Adelaide?
LikeLike
Hung is a nice bloke who, perhaps like all of us, at times, suffers from being a tortured soul. In fact, I suspect anyone claiming they never reside in that house of horrors, lives on a diet of spiritual/emotional instant mashed potatoes without gravy.
He has apologized bravely and numerously. The door for others to follow is left open at all hours, just leave your muddy shoes outside and don’t pinch the alms from the tin.
Please, EVERYONE stop. No more ‘ad hominem’ on Pigs.
LikeLike
Hi Hung, sorry to not have been here online earlier to reply. I don’t have a home in Adelaide. I am here to stay for a while. Which is OK. I was offered a second lease on my house and signed for 12 month -and the house is nice with a pleasant yard.
I reckon myself that the action is in this forum and should stay in the forum if there are any questions you have that are pertinent to me.
In regard to what you have said you are sorry for, you can go back over the text here if you need to refresh your understanding of what you had to say and your conduct towards others because it is all there as far as I know. I don’t think any of it was censored or removed.
I appreciate that you have responded Hung and are taking the time to consider what I have had to say. Taking some time over it is a really good thing I reckon and I know you have the background to accomplish it because it is a really big thing, especially with pain, leastwise that is my experience that living through pain takes time and understanding pain is just very painful.
It’s getting a bit cold here this evening so much so I have a woolly beanie on and a balloon of a wind jacket. Wish I could draw you a piccy with symbols but I can’t make a body part round enough. 🙂
LikeLike
Leave muddy boots outside and don’t pinch the alms from the tin??!!!
I will ignore that and steal the alms from the tin not and wear my muddy boots wherever I want to as I only have one pair of shoes especially as it is cold, Gez.
LikeLike
As you wish then sandshoe. I will reply in the forum in due time. I however am much more direct in the way I speak and you may not like what I say so I just thought you will need to be prepared for that.
LikeLike
Your post is quite astounding sandshoe. To start, you say that you followed the tale on the Arms from the library but at no stage did you join in, to share with the community to which you say you retreated into as a safe haven. To me this is withholding information so at a later stage you could ambush, and ambush you have.
At no point in time and space did I say that I was the one and only emotional hothead. That is simply your interpretation only. If you want to join me feel free.
Sandshoe, Tutu left me about 18 months ago. This equates to 547 days. In those 547 days I have had 7 good days yet you resent me having one good day on my birthday. It is starting to look bad for you. Do you know that people like me that suffer from anxiety and depression actually feel guilty when they have a good time? No I didn’t think so. My counsellors want me to be more positive and self loving and a retrospective comment I made to you just now “I’m not very bright” is a regression back to the depressed me. Are you happy now you have made me regress? Do you realise how difficult it is for me to make positive statements about myself?
Really bad things happened shoe, more than I have said here at The Arms. As far a homosexuals go the one overriding characteristic they all have is they love to let you know about it. They shove it down your throat and demand equality. Homosexuality is not normal, it exists and is real but biologically it is an abnormal behaviour. Most gay men a mincers and most gay women are men haters. As work mates or social friends I couldn’t care less, just don’t shove it down my throat and demand equality when the gay community can never be biologically equal.
You then go on to question my professional integrity. Seeing that you don’t know me either personally or professionally this statement reeks of a hidden agenda fuelled by
ignorance. I have been a successful nurse for 35 years. To do that you need to work by the ethic that you leave your problems at the door. I have seen them come and go over the time and I label the poor nurses as “Sparklers” bright and fascinating but quickly die out as that is what happens to them. Sparklers are always right, always know everything and are the only ones that can ever do anything properly. They never last, in the real world it is about being consistent, leave your problems at the door and treat everyone the same. For the record my most recent employer has said that I am one of the best Registered Nurses they have ever employed and at performance review I was told they would like many more like me, so much for your ignorant statement.
You then say that I would have been arrested for my comments. My barrister would argue that I was temporarily insane, which I was and would never have been charged. Given the mix of alcohol, known depression and anxiety, marriage separation and flashbacks about sexual abuse I have and had a very good case, cheap shot sandshoe. Next.
Your local friend got service, me as a low to middle income earner I have to virtually pay my whole way through this experience and let me tell you it isn’t cheap. Services aren’t aimed at people like me.
Having re-read your post several times to ensure that I assimilated it all I can see that you have some sort of hidden agenda that you have not declared here at The Arms, you jumped on information that at a later stage was to give you some form of advantage, you ignorantly slurred my professional standing and you are resentful of the fact that I am making some sort of recovery. Looks to me as a problem ownership issue is occurring and you my friend are the one with the problem. My problems are clearly defined and out there, tell us yours?
LikeLike
I did nothing of the sort regards ambush. You missed the previous information I have provided variously about the service at the library meaning that to keep up with what was happening at the Arms I could only download everything and read it in email. I was offered originally 300mb a day and it was eventually increased to 100mb for me to update Windows. It was arduous to keep up for some months and the library does not have enough computers to do more than anything absolutely basic and no privacy because the screens are large in a public place with only enough space behind them to pass behind the chair of the user.
I made no accusations against your work as a nurse. I told you what I was thinking about, when I was reading your expressions of unreserved vitriol, which is revealing about me, not about you. That’s how I think.
Thank you for being clear about what you think in reference to homosexuality and you called the participating piglets at The Arms the same names of abuse that are part and parcel of the mind set so I will have to accept what I believed may be true, that we are on a different wave length in this reference and I simply don’t know what you were saying sorry for. I’ll accept it as a principle. Thank you.
My friend I referred to is a low income earner such as yourself. Rural services are very scary and crucially limited Hung, not that I am suggesting you are better or worse off in any respect concerning access to treatment. Access to health services is a very difficult issue, eh.
I do not have a hidden agenda, I think not Hung. Nothing could be clearer and more open regards where I stand in this respect. Neither do I have any investment in jealousy against your recovery. I have no idea what gain could be had out of wishing you back where you have been. I wish you well. I am happy you have entered a phase of recovery and you seem to be capable and well given what you have endured.
LikeLike
Fair enough, you say you did not wish to ambush me however if you had a upload and download limit you were therefore capable of sending an email. On gays I don’t hate them. I lived with a gay guy called Paul, he was one of the best guys I have ever met. He did not have a problem with me being a heterosexual and I still love him today. My cousin Peter and niece Kelly are both gay and you couldn’t meet nicer people. I have worked with some really nasty lesbians that threaten you with violence if you don’t agree with them, bull dykes I think they are referred to and they emulate men. That adds to my predisposition of not supporting gay marriage. They come out on the Drum as though they are such lovely people, the reality is much different.
Lets face it you did slur me as a nurse. I am recovering, you resented that, face up to it.
LikeLike
Thank you for your response Hung.
I am a great fan of your Gordon O’Donnell stories, Hung, a fan. Not just because you’re one of the crowd of “us” but because you are Hung One On of mighty talent, entertaining, extraordinary. When I first sussed out the PA I followed the links to your blog and amazed at whatI found there. I had voyaged to a new land, funny and quixotic, pretty and teasing, spirited. I’m not a dill that I would want you ill.
Perhaps you will remember that I said so. Perhaps you will accept it. Who knows one day…
I set our talk in the open forum as soon as I could because-myself-I think we really needed to be out here together in the forum, battling through the pain because that was v painful experience and this – here – is our home albeit away from home. Pig’s Arms wouldn’t be the same without you, o Hung of Gordon O’Donnell stature, same as wouldn’t be same without me, Voice, Gez, Algy, Vivienne, Lehan, ‘Mou, Astyages, Nev and all the rest of the gang … where would we be without Julian. It’s certainly not the same without Helvi.
Anyway, you talked to me OK here. You have had a lot to say that was full on and distressed and then since. It’s a long way in such a short time from ‘Yo’. Thank you, again, Hung.
LikeLike
Far enough shoe. Thank you,
LikeLike
Vivienne. Sorry about the Vivian, I must have been thinking of your tits. I’ll never argue with those…
LikeLike
What? What did I miss?
LikeLike
It is in the past now. Best left there.
LikeLike
I missed most of it, it’s what happens when one works nights, slumbering away during the day whilst wars are fought, dynasties toppled in peasant led coups, and simple folk stand down tanks, armed with only a white shopping bag.
I just caught up with the chap who had been my best friend in school. Don’t remember why we stopped talking, some perceived offense. What amazed me was not the differences between us, but the similarities, the same school kid interests that re-emerged in our fifties, the way we had, after much research, bought the same product, the same love of cars, boats, stars and space.
Why do we allow some small transgression to damage our greatest friendships?
LikeLike
Stopping talking is the hardest to overcome. With talk there is always hope. You like boats? Sail or fishing?
I used to take my son out of Sydney’s harbour at night and go fishing.
LikeLike
Used to sail on Middle Harbour, if we could con an adult into driving the boats to the Spit!
Haven’t sailed for 35 years.
LikeLike
Well, thank goodness for that. Welcome back Gerard. Now we just have to pull Helvi back to her computer and keyboard and tap in a hello.
But, Gerard I have not morphed into a bloke. Vivian is masculine. I’m Vivienne – the one with the tits !
LikeLike